NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Improved Antihydrogen Production at the ATRAP Experiment A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Physics By Edouard Nottet EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2020 2 © Edouard Nottet - 2020 All rights reserved. 3 Thesis advisor Author Gerald Gabrielse Edouard Nottet Improved Antihydrogen Production at the ATRAP Experiment Abstract In 2018, our ATRAP collaboration produced 5 trapped antihydrogen atoms per hour long trial. An apparatus with a Ioffe octupole trap and a faster magnet dump was used to confine and detect trapped H¯ atoms. This apparatus is unique in that four sideports spaced at 90 degrees from each other around the Ioffe trap provide optical access to the center of the trap to allow precise measurements of the 1S-2S transition of H¯ atoms. In a Penning-Ioffe trap, positron and antiproton plasmas on axis at very low temperature with a certain radius, length and density can form trapped antihydrogen atoms via three-body recombination. The strong-drive evaporative cooling method implemented in 2018 is essential to form reproducible plasmas. To better characterize positron, electron and antiproton plasmas, the plasma imaging system was developed and the plasma modes system has been improved. With minor modifications of the apparatus, we would be able to produce and accumulate antihydrogen atoms much faster in the future. For this reason, a new design of the electrode stack is proposed. The accumulation of antihydrogen atoms is essential to trap more than 100 H¯ atoms in a Ioffe trap and measure precisely the 1S-2S transition. Acknowledgments 4 First, I would like to thank my supervisor Gerald Gabrielse for giving me the opportunity to be part of the ATRAP experiment and for his support during my PhD. He was always present if I needed help at Northwestern or at CERN. His dedication to the ATRAP experiment was very impressive. I also would like to thank my fellow graduate student Nathan Jones. He taught me how to run the experiment at CERN, plasma physics, and to solve electronic problems. We exchanged many emails and calls during the day and the night. Finally, I would like to thank Eric Tardiff, Gunn Khatri, Tharon Morrison, and Daniel Zambrano. Their help was very useful when learning about positrons, lasers, cryogenic systems, and detectors. 5 Contents Title Page....................................1 Abstract.....................................3 Acknowledgments................................4 Table of Contents................................4 Publications...................................7 1 Introduction8 1.1 CPT theorem and antihydrogen experiment..............8 1.1.1 The CPT theorem........................8 1.1.2 Comparison of the 1S-2S transition of hydrogen and antihydro- gen atoms.............................9 1.1.3 Spectroscopy........................... 11 1.2 Overview of the antihydrogen research and of this work........ 13 2 The ATRAP apparatus 16 2.1 The Penning trap............................. 16 2.2 The electrodes............................... 19 2.3 Ioffe trap.................................. 23 2.4 The apparatus............................... 26 2.5 Detectors................................. 29 2.6 Laser diagnostics and the microwave system.............. 31 3 Antihydrogen production and plasma diagnostics 35 3.1 Introduction................................ 35 3.2 Non-neutral plasmas at CERN...................... 36 3.2.1 Electron and positron plasmas.................. 36 3.2.2 Antiproton plasmas........................ 38 3.3 Physical processes involved in the antihydrogen production...... 40 3.4 Non-neutral plasmas characteristics and antihydrogen production.. 42 3.5 Plasmas diagnostics............................ 44 3.5.1 Plasma modes system...................... 45 6 3.5.2 Determination of plasma characteristics with plasma modes. 48 3.5.3 Plasma imaging system...................... 50 3.5.4 Plasma imaging results...................... 54 3.5.5 Number of charged particles in the electrode stack....... 57 3.5.6 Antiproton plasma temperature diagnostic........... 59 4 Plasmas manipulation techniques and antihydrogen trials 63 4.1 Plasmas manipulation techniques.................... 64 4.1.1 Antiprotons steering....................... 64 4.1.2 Rotating wall and strong-drive regime-evaporative cooling method 65 4.1.3 Adiabatic transfer of particles.................. 69 4.1.4 Plasma cooling methods..................... 70 4.2 Antihydrogen trials and production of 5 trapped antihydrogen atoms per hour.................................. 72 4.2.1 Antihydrogen trial method.................... 72 4.2.2 Clearing electric field....................... 76 4.2.3 Results............................... 77 5 Proposed design of the apparatus 81 5.1 Introduction................................ 81 5.2 Proposed electrode stack and antihydrogen trial............ 82 5.3 XY translation stage replacement.................... 85 5.4 Electrode stack modifications...................... 87 5.4.1 Electrodes............................. 87 5.4.2 Rotating wall electrodes..................... 88 6 Conclusion 92 Bibliography 95 Publications 7 1. Lyman-α source for laser cooling antihydrogen G. Gabrielse, B. Glowacz, D. Grzonka, C. D. Hamley, E. A. Hessels, N. Jones, G. Khatri, S. A. Lee, C. Meisenhelder, T. Morrison, E. Nottet, C. Rasor, S. Ronald, T. Skinner, C. H. Storry, E. Tardiff, D. Yost, D. Martinez Zambrano, and M. Zielinski, Opt. Lett. 43, 2905-2908 (2018). 2. Two-Symmetry Penning-Ioffe Trap for Antihydrogen Cooling and Spec- troscopy E. Tardiff, X. Fan, G. Gabrielse, D. Grzonka, C. Hamley, E. A. Hessels, N. Jones, G. Khatri, S. Kolthammer, D. Martinez Zambrano, C. Meisenhelder, T. Morrison, E. Nottet, E. Novitski and C. H. Storry, arXiv:2003.05032 (2020). Chapter 1: Introduction 8 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 CPT theorem and antihydrogen experiment 1.1.1 The CPT theorem It is still unknown why matter, rather than antimatter, survived after the big- bang. One of the explanations could be that the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe could be generated through CPT violation and baryon number violation. The CPT theorem suggests that every relativistic quantum field theory has a symmetry that simultaneously reverses charge, reverses the orientation of space and reverses the flow of time [1]. CPT symmetry is one of the most important fundamental property of relativistic quantum field theory. No experiments have so far found a CPT violation. However, some string theories violate CPT symmetry [2] and gravity has not yet been successfully described by a quantum field theory. It is possible that the CPT theorem is not universal. Chapter 1: Introduction 9 P, C and T symmetries are all separately violated. For examples, Wu et al. observed in 1956 the first experimental evidence of parity violation during the β decay 60 60 − of spin-polarized 27Co ! 28Ni + e +ν ¯e + 2γ [3]. Equal numbers of electrons should be emitted parallel and antiparallel to the magnetic field if parity is conserved. But they found that more electrons were emitted in the direction opposite to the magnetic field and therefore opposite to the nuclear spin. Then, CP violation was discovered in 1964 by Cronin and Fitch [4]. Neutral kaons can ever decay into pions, positrons and neutrinos or into pions, electrons and anti-neutrinos. However, they observed that such transformations do not occur with the same probability in both directions. CP invariance suggests an identical probability for the two, contrary to observations. 1.1.2 Comparison of the 1S-2S transition of hydrogen and an- tihydrogen atoms Studies on trapped antihydrogen atoms will give the possibility to answer the following question in physics: is CPT symmetry an exact symmetry of nature? By comparing the 1S-2S transition of antihydrogen and hydrogen atoms, it is possible to test CPT invariance in this system. CPT invariance implies that particles and antiparticles have the same mass, magnetic moment (except opposite sign), mean life and charge-to-mass (except opposite sign). It also implies that H and H¯ have the same atomic structure and transition frequencies. Different experiments compare energy levels, magnetic moments, mass ratios, charge-to-mass ratio and lifetime of different types of particles (lepton, baryon and meson) to test CPT invariance at various precision (Fig 1.1). The precision that could be achieved by comparing the Chapter 1: Introduction 10 H¯ and H 1S-2S transition frequency is very high if the H¯ transition can be measured as precisely as with H (Fig 1.1). The 1S-2S transition of hydrogen atoms has been 15 already measured very precisely: f1S−2S = 2:46×10 Hz ± 10 Hz [5]. This represents a fractional uncertainty of 4:2 × 10−15. Figure 1.1: CPT tests and comparison of how accurately the 1S-2S transition of H¯ and H atoms could be compared if the H precision is attained [6]. A measurement at the hydrogen precision of the lepton-baryon system (Fig 1.1) would improve the lepton and baryon measurements tests. The ratios of me+=me− could be improved by a factor of 10000 [7] and mp¯=mp [8] by an order of magnitude. In fact, the ratio of Rydberg constants determined from the 1S- 2S transition in H and H¯ depends on the ratios of the masses and charges of their ingredient particles Chapter 1: Introduction 11 R ¯ me+ qe+ qp¯ 1 + me−=mp H = ( )( )2( )2( ): (1.1) RH me− qe− qp 1 + me+=mp¯ However, no precise measurement of the H¯ 1S-2S transition has been determined. The only H¯ 1S-2S transition